Reconciliation Is Back?

by Pejman Yousefzadeh on February 19, 2010

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The use of reconciliation to pass health care reform through the Senate would be entirely contrary to the purposes of the reconciliation process. There is, of course, every reason to think that Democrats won’t have the stomach to go through with reconciliation; the process is a lot more complicated than people think it is. Reconciliation would force Democrats to pare down their health care goals. And an attempt to use reconciliation to push through health care would destroy all hopes of bipartisan cooperation on other issues in Congress. I am sure that there are Democrats for whom none of this serves as a deterrent to using reconciliation, but plenty of other Democrats will be terrified by the consequences of reconciliation. As they ought to be.